Friday, February 05, 2010

Yeah, I kind of dropped if for a while... almost a year now, I guess. A lot has happened since then... I plan to back-peddle in the next little while and go into some of those things at length, but today I thought I would just dive back in balls deep with this little note... on the topic of the finest competitive reality program of the competitive reality era: RuPaul's Drag Race.

Are you watching this show? Because you should be. You should be going to great lengths to watch this show... For real - you should be ENDANGERING yourself if necessary because it is fucking quuuality...

I've got a very long established boner for RuPaul... Back when I was but a misbegotten gay growing up in Brockville, my family lived on the outskirts of town (I know... who the fuck lives on the "outskirts" of town... Moonshine-makers and Ferret breeders - THAT'S WHO! ... And me, apparently) - so we couldn't get cable. So instead, we got a satellite dish... but it wasn't one of those DirecTV things that just pin to your eaves trough, it was one of those enormous hemispherical structures that would need to reposition itself if you changed the channel. They were pretty bonkers.

Anyballs... this meant that my childhood television viewing experience was decidedly un-Canadian. Never watched Much... never watched YTV... never watched The Comedy Network... I got to watch HBO, Comedy Central, MTV, a scrambled version of the Spice network (which, PS, wasn't pixilated or even blurry... the extent of the scrambling was that THE SOUND WAS CUT OUT... because that's what you watch porn for... the sound... ) and of course, my raison d'etre in the mid-late 90's... Vh1.

I seem to recall Vh1's shift from being MTV's adult-contemporary sister station/hub-of-all-things-Michael-Bolton into this wacky tickle-trunk of alternative and campy programming beginning somewhere in 1996 with the advent of The RuPaul Show... if you didn't know this, yes... RuPaul had a talk show. And it was the fucking BEST.

It was like nothing else on television... I think the only other gay guys on TV at that time were Ricky from "My So-Called Life", what-the-fuck's-his-face from "Melrose Place" and Ma-Ti from "Captain Planet" (well, at least I assume... he was voiced by Alanna Ubach, afterall)... so you can imagine how mind-blowing it was having this magical Glamazonian drag queen hosting a talk show whose guest list was this endless parade of camp icons...

This was before I even knew what 'camp' was - this was slightly before the Internet permeated culture, remember. Before you could wikipedia or IMDB or youtube some ostentatious broad from the past... RuPaul's show was like a crash course in camp and pop-culture that just blew the fuck out of my small-town gay brain... on any given show - and I'm entirely serious about this - the lineup could and would include: Bernadette Peters, Kathy Najimy and a performance by Pat Benatar. FOR REALS. I do believe that was the lineup of one of the episodes!!!

Another hypothetical lineup? How's about a surprise reunion betwixt Maude co-stars the late, great Bea Arthur and the slightly later and equally great Esther Rolle followed by an underwear fashion show? Sounds to good to be true? It's not... check THIS shit out: http://wow.wowtv.tv/episodes/bea-arthur-on-the-rupaul-show

I. Know.

Amazing! So that's what I spent many an afternoon watching whilst I gorged on Snackwell's. Jealous? Of course you are.

Any way, I've just been this gagging disciple of RuPaul's since, and was so excited that s/he would be stepping into the role of Tyra Banks on hi/r very own competitive reality format... but as it turns out, RuPaul's role would be much, much more than that. S/he, in fact plays Tyra Banks-meets-Tim Gunn-meets-Simon Cowell-meets-well, RuPaul in a show that is essentially the best elements of Top Model-meets-Project Runway-meets-Idol. I know! Sounds amazing, and it is!

Last season - although done a shoestring budget - was absolutely sensational and introduced us to a slew of characters each more unforgettable than the last... From eventual winner BeBe to the "Loca" fashions of Nina Flowers to audience favorite Ongina - a star was born and born and born.

Well, it's back for Season 2 and everything looks bigger and better! Although we're only 1 episode into the season, here are my first impressions on this season's crop of girls...

First off - in an interview with some sort of news outlet that I can't possibly remember in order to source, Ru said that a lot of the girls this season did indeed audition for last season but weren't cast because "they didn't want an overlap of types"...

This is both A.) incredibly disappointing because YAWN - we're basically getting a second-rate version of someone from last season and B.) incredibly OBVIOUS who's whom...

From the top - Raven is soooo this year's Shanel. Another showgirl who's been in this business for 65 years and repeats that fact with boisterous confidence every opportunity she gets. It's pretty obvs that those two could never have been in the same room.

Ongina and JuJuBee would have never been cast in the same season, and not just because their both diminutive and Asian... same with Jessica Wild and Nina Flowers, and not just because they're both Peurto Rican and charmingly indecipherable...

I'm getting a lot of archetypal similarity between BeBe and Tyra Sanchez as well... A similar old-world drag feel - like they both came straight out Dorian Corey's walk-in closet/tomb - and a potential It-girl quality... They clearly have different backstories... one is an immigrant from Cameroon and one is raising a son and a pair of devastatingly unfortunate eyebrows... but they are very approximate TYPES. And that's too bad... it's something that a lot of reality shows try and do in their second season... try to be too explicit with a formula... and really, the only queen that I really wanted a sequel from was Tammie Brown...

Beyond the girls who remind me of girls from last season, there are also girls who remind me of other people...

Nicole Paige Brooks - a reject from last season - a southern belle from Hotlanta, GA is a dead-ringer for Jan Hooks (who, PS, surfaced for the first time since what has got to have been 1992 for a guest role on 30 Rock as Jenna's mom and 'yikes' would be an understatement...)

Specifically, seeing as Nicole is from Atlanta, Jan Hooks AS Carlene Dobber - her role from Designing Women. For reals... she might as well change her name from Nicole Paige Brooks to Nicole Paige HOOKS...

And Pandora Boxx is straight up Kathy Griffin without the Restalyne... a fact that was amply illustrated by the fact that Kathy Griffin was actually in attendance as a guest judge and Pandora expressedly wore her "Kathy Griffin Wig"...

Sonique looks like Julianne Hough-meets-Olivia Newton-John-meets-The Lead singer from Roxette... Sahara in boy form looks exactly like a guy I've made out with before... Tatianna is probably serving the most 'fish', as they say... she looks like a blatino starlet that you might see on the arm of a Jamie Foxx or a Chris Tucker...

And then of course we have Mystique Summers Madison... who, as a boy, looks like Kenan Thompson, and as a girl is a straight-up drag version Mo'Nique from Precious... and judging from the behind-the-scenes footage of her sparring with Morgan, she means fucking business and WILL fucking cut you...